Technology
Why Scott Painter Is Selling His Beach House to Start a New Vehicle Software Company
Serial entrepreneur Scott Painter’s plan to construct an all-electric subscription automotive company called Autonomy has backfired, so he’s back on what he calls the “hardest build” of his profession.
While Autonomy will proceed to operate the small fleet of 1,000 cars it has amassed over the past few years (a far cry from its stated goal of 23,000), Painter is starting a recent company called Autonomy Data Services, or ADS for brief, he told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview.
The recent company will provide a software platform and data to automakers looking to run their very own subscription services for electric, gas, recent and even used cars. Painter says he’s also in talks with automotive dealers, fleet operators and even firms that sell construction and agricultural equipment but might want to offer subscriptions. He says an early version of the service is already generating revenue.
Painter says ADS is in negotiations with multiple automakers, including three which have previously operated their very own subscription service. The company is partnering with Deloitte to run the service; ADS will get a share of the revenue as a software-as-a-service provider, while Deloitte will charge automakers (or other customers) for customizing the platform.
It’s one other twist for Painter, who has had a difficult few years. After stepping down as CEO of automotive retailer TrueCar in 2015 (a company he founded in 2005), he launched automotive leasing startup Fair, which has received greater than $300 million in funding from SoftBank. That’s over poorlyEarly investors accused SoftBank of leading the corporate into failure, and Painter ultimately resigned as CEO in 2021.
His last shift wasn’t easy either.
To make all of it occur, Painter had to persuade Autonomy’s investors, a few of whom were underwater when the subscription service never took off as promised.
“Our lenders had something called senior secured status; they could kill the company and try to liquidate the fleet” to get a few of their a refund, he says. But he worked with them to convert $32 million of debt in Autonomy into equity in ADS.
He also says he had to “do some personal digging,” including selling his $6 million beach house on Pacific Coast Highway, mortgage one other property and “sell a lot of assets I didn’t want to sell.”
“It was the hardest job I’ve ever done as an entrepreneur,” he says, describing the method as “hugging a cactus.”
Data takeover for a six-figure sum
Autonomy was already struggling last yr when Elon Musk’s aggressive price cutting destroyed it the worth of a small fleetmost of them were Teslas. (Painter, who knows Musk personally, says he tried to “instill in Elon the importance of being more predictable with discounts,” but to no avail.)
The problem this time is that the majority major automakers have already tried subscription services. And just about all of them have abandoned the concept.
Painter says that happened because automakers “didn’t yet have the fidelity or understanding of how subscriptions would work.” Because all of those subscription services from automakers were brand recent, he says, they didn’t understand how customers would behave. Would they subscribe for just a few months? Or a few years?
Without that information, it’s really hard to set prices, Painter says, which is why automakers have charged high prices for his or her subscription services, scaring customers away.
That kind of knowledge is one in every of the things it plans to offer through ADS. And it’s not only coming from Autonomy customers. Painter quietly bought the assets of bankrupt used-car marketplace Shift Technologies earlier this yr for lower than $1 million. In the years leading up to its demise, Shift bought Painter’s former car-leasing startup Fair, which had previously acquired Ford’s subscription service Canvas—returning the remnants of its former business to its own ownership—and Uber’s leasing service Xchange.
Data from all of those firms may be used to predict “how long people stay in their cars based on their customer cohort, what their FICO score is, how much income they have, and so on and so forth,” Painter says. That’s essential not only since it provides certainty, but additionally because the flexibleness of subscription services is attractive to customers with lower credit scores.
Painter says that as well as to customer data, he obtained all source code, patents, trademarks, and compliance and legal “work product” from these bankrupt firms, which he says should make it much easier for ADS to relaunch its business for patrons in recent markets.
In total, he says he received greater than a terabyte, jokingly calling it “an astonishing avalanche of sh—.”
“My IT people were just saying, ‘What are you going to do with all this?’ It just kept coming,” he says. But, he notes, the businesses that generated all that data “spent a combined $1 billion developing the software” he now owns and uses at ADS.
“I mean, when (SoftBank CEO) Masayoshi Son finds out that I managed to buy all of Fair’s assets and intellectual property for less than a million dollars, I mean, it’s just going to kill him,” he jokes.
And while he has raised $2.5 million in enterprise funding, the work isn’t done. “We’ve done everything we need to do to make (ADS) an investable business. Now we’re just looking for an equity partner who’s willing to put in $5 million to $8 million,” he says. “That gives the company two years to get up and running so it can continue to grow with Deloitte.”
Technology
Columbus says ransomware gang stole personal information of 500,000 Ohioans
The city of Columbus, the capital of Ohio, confirmed that hackers stole the personal information of 500,000 residents during a July ransomware attack.
In filing In an interview with Maine’s attorney general, Columbus confirmed that a “foreign threat actor” breached its network to access information including residents’ names, dates of birth, addresses, identification documents, social security numbers and checking account information .
Ohio’s most populous city, with about 900,000 people, said about half 1,000,000 people were affected, even though it didn’t confirm the precise number of victims.
The regulatory filing comes after Columbus was the goal of a ransomware attack on July 18 this 12 months by city officials he claimed “thwart” it by disconnecting your network from the Internet.
Rhysida, the ransomware gang accountable for last 12 months’s cyber attack on the British Library, claimed responsibility for the August attack on Columbus. At the time, the gang said it had stolen 6.5 terabytes of data from the Ohio city, including “databases, internal employee logins and passwords, a full server dump of city emergency services applications, and … access from city video cameras,” in response to local news reports.
Rhysida demanded 30 bitcoins, or roughly $1.9 million on the time of the cyberattack, as payment for the stolen data.
Two weeks after the cyberattack, Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther told the general public that the stolen data was likely “corrupted” and “unusable.”
The accuracy of Ginther’s statement was called into query the day after David Leroy Ross, a cybersecurity researcher also often called Connor Goodwolf, revealed that the personal information of a whole lot of 1000’s of Columbus residents had been placed on the dark web.
In September, Columbus sued Ross, alleging that it “threatened to make stolen city data available to third parties who otherwise would not have readily available means to obtain stolen city data.” A judge issued a brief restraining order against Ross, stopping him from accessing the stolen data.
In a listing published Monday by TechCrunch on the leak site, Rhysida claims to have transferred 3.1 terabytes of “unsold” data stolen from Columbus, amounting to greater than 250,000 files.
Technology
Threads now has 275 million monthly active users
Meta’s social network, Threads, now has 275 million monthly active users (MAUs), the corporate said on Sunday.
“Yesterday we passed 275 million monthly active users on @Threads. We would like to thank everyone who helped us get this far. There is a lot more to do and a lot to fix, but there is something exciting about this place.” he said Adam Mosseri, the director of Meta who runs Threads and Instagram.
Launched in July 2023 to capitalize on the tens of millions of users leaving X after Elon Musk purchased the platform, Threads quickly gained users and has turn out to be one in all the most important text-first social networks today. The platform reached 150 million MAU in April and 200 million MAU in August, which suggests it has gained 75 million active users in only 3 months.
Last week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in the course of the company’s conference call following its third-quarter 2024 earnings that one million people were signing up for Threads daily.
While user acquisition on the platform is trending upwards, Threads has been battling plenty of issues moderation issues that frustrated users.
Technology
Affirm is launching the product in the UK as the buy now, pay later market faces regulatory changes
Buy now, pay later (BNPL) giant Confirm launches in the UK, its first market outside North America.
Its long-awaited arrival comes as UK lawmakers consider latest rules to align BNPL corporations with other traditional consumer credit services, although such rules are usually not expected to return into force until at the least 2026 — long enough for Affirm to achieve traction and gain favor with consumers and regulators alike.
Founded in 2012, Affirm emerged from a startup incubator called HVF, founded by the co-founder of PayPal Max Levchin (pictured above), who eventually took the reins of Affirm in 2014 to fuel its industrial growth. The company has expanded beyond the US and Canada in 2022and has forged lucrative partnerships with major e-commerce corporations over the years — Affirm has been Shopify’s premier financial partner for nearly a decade, not to say Walmart and Amazon, which last yr chosen Affirm as its first Amazon Pay BNPL partner in the U.S. . Recently, Affirm also acquired the mighty Apple as a client.
“Debt normalization”
The BNPL model is easy: customers are encouraged to buy goods on credit, repaying the debt in several interest-free installments, and the BNPL provider makes money from merchant fees. Or, if the customer may require an extended repayment period, the loan may include interest.
The BNPL market has long been on the radar of UK regulators, with existing operators such as Klarna and Clearpay often criticized for encouraging impulse purchases and debt normalization. So far, this has been done by the British Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). certain powers to manage BNPL providersbut there are key exceptions, such as interest-free credit services, where fixed-amount contracts provide for debt repayment inside 12 months.
However, latest rules which are in the pipeline could bring BNPL corporations fully into line with other consumer credit corporations. The Labor government last month announced a brand new BNPL consultation with plans to introduce regulations to “ensure people using BNPL products have clear information, avoid overpriced loans and have strong rights when problems arise”.
It’s clear that Affirm is already attempting to position itself favorably with each customers and authorities. Indeed, for the UK launch, the company notes that its interest-bearing payment options won’t include compound interest – as a substitute, the interest shall be fixed and calculated in full on the original amount borrowed.
It’s also value noting that Klarna began charging late fees last yr in the UK, and this is one area where Affirm goals to distinguish itself – it says it won’t charge late fees or another “hidden fees”.
Directly
It’s been a difficult few years for the BNPL sector. Klarna was valued at over $45 billion in 2021, a figure that quickly dropped by 85% to $6.5 billion following the great post-pandemic “correction” that many corporations have experienced. However, last week news broke that Klarna was being priced rose again to $14.6 billion. It’s been a similarly tumultuous time for Affirm, whose ups and downs have followed a trajectory harking back to its European rival.
After its 2021 IPO, Affirm’s market capitalization reached a staggering $47 billion, but the company’s stock has taken an enormous hit, with its market capitalization dipping below $3 billion in the past yr. However, Affirm’s stock has soared to over $13 billion in 2024, and the company is listed on NASDAQ the company recently reported fourth quarter year-over-year revenue growth of 48% and losses decreased from $206 million to $45 million. Levchin also projected profitability in 2025.
We’ve known for a while that Affirm’s next port of call outside the US and Canada can be the UK, and the company’s chief revenue officer Wayne Pommen is the record holder say it will deal with markets where a few of its largest existing partners are already present.
For a UK launch, it doesn’t have any of the big name brands it has in the domestic market, but the proven fact that it counts the likes of Amazon, Shopify and Apple amongst its US customers means it would not be an enormous deal. For now, nonetheless, Affirm intends to operate in the market through flight booking site Alternative Airlines and payment processor Fexco, and “additional UK and international brands are expected to follow.”
In preparation for today’s launch, Affirm told TechCrunch it has already hired roughly 30 employees, including Ruth Spratt who manages the local branch and at the same time plans to extend employment by the end of the yr. And much like your individual “remote first” ethos elsewhereemployees are usually not tied to a selected physical hub.
The company didn’t confirm its next expansion plans in Europe or elsewhere, but said it will “take the same disciplined approach” it has all the time taken to future expansion.
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